Tag: Frustration

SACRAMENTO — As PG&E Corp. and its utility subsidiary filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday over mounting costs from the past two wildfire seasons, California lawmakers expressed frustration that controversial wildfire liability reform legislation passed last year was not enough to prevent PG&E’s move and dismissed the possibility of intervening again to assist the troubled utility. Opponents dismissed the measure as a bailout. Yet PG&E is now facing even greater potential liabilities from the Camp Fire, which ravaged Butte County last November and is not covered by the bill. Related Stories State Sen. Bill Dodd, the Napa Democrat who carried SB901, said Tuesday that it “remains hard to do anything more than we’ve done” without a complete change in PG&E’s management. He noted that much of the board of directors is the same as it was in 2010, when one of the company’s natural gas pipelines exploded in San Bruno, killing eight people. He called for new executive leadership that would “submit to a culture of safety throughout the whole organization.” “The mismanagement at PG&E has led to this,” Dodd said. “I was kind of out there by myself on that one,” Holden said. The Legislature’s focus will likely shift instead to issues that remain unresolved from last session, particularly whether California should change a legal principle called inverse condemnation that holds utilities liable for any damage caused by wildfires started by their equipment, even if they were not negligent in maintaining it. He is exploring a way to give lawmakers veto power over whatever arrangement the state utilities commission signs off on for PG&E. “You can’t believe a word they say, and they keep trying to fool the public and fool legislators into thinking they are something different than what they are,” said Hill, who has been a fierce critic of the company since the San Bruno explosion.

Democrats expressed frustration that the FBI had not spoken to Ford, nor a host of other potential witnesses in connection with the probe. » Subscribe to MSNBC: http://on.msnbc.com/SubscribeTomsnbc About: MSNBC is the premier destination for in-depth analysis of daily headlines,…

But Trump is vehemently defending the summit in Helsinki, Finland, seven days ago as a great success, despite lingering mystery over what went on in his private one-on-one meeting with Putin and amid uproar over his invitation to the Russian leader for a second summit at the White House. One week on from the Putin summit, no one can stop talking about it. Trump tweeted. "I think there's no ignoring the fact that for whatever reason, this President acts like he's compromised," Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on ABC News' "This Week." Mystification over Trump's invitation to the Russian leader is compounded by the astounding prospect that the meeting with Putin will be in Washington in the fall, around the time of midterm elections, which US intelligence agencies say are already being targeted by Russia. The President also accused the Justice Department and the FBI of misleading the courts, following the release of a previously classified warrant application to surveil former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Trump tweeted that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act documents "confirm with little doubt" that the Justice Department and FBI "misled the courts," despite the fact that the document itself acted as legal justification for the FBI to obtain the 2016 warrant. Lanny Davis, an attorney for Cohen, questioned whether the tape, first reported by The New York Times, supported the arguments of the President's lawyers that there was no wrongdoing by the President. But in a possible sign of concern that Cohen could chose to cooperate with prosecutors in a way that could deepen the President's legal exposure, Trump lambasted Cohen in a tweet Saturday that mischaracterized the FBI's raid on his home and office in April, which was executed on a court-approved warrant, amid a criminal investigation of Cohen by the US attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. "Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of & perhaps illegal.